Author Archives: Tim Lenton

American evangelists don’t get as good a press nowadays as they did when I was young. Any kind of assurance, blessed or not, is now greeted with suspicion – which makes it remarkable that so many people still have such good things to say about Dr Billy Graham, who died this month at the age of 99.

He preached conversion to vast numbers of people over the years. I was one of them, and I remember wanting to respond to his appeal to “get up out of your seats” when I attended his rally at Harringay in 1954, when I was about nine. But I was too shy to move.

Nevertheless I did become a Christian not long afterwards – just before my father died when I was ten and our family’s life was turned on its head.

A little more than 12 years after that, through a series of strange events involving a holiday in Somerset and an apparently chance meeting with a Scotsman, I actually moved to London from Norwich – surprising myself as much as anyone – and began work for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

No, I wasn’t an apprentice preacher. I worked for a newspaper called The Christian – a very old British national weekly that the BGEA had just acquired. I was an editorial assistant, and I met some interesting people, including a Birmingham typist called Stephanie Drew who I encouraged to leave and become a nurse. Not one of my more far-sighted moves, though it proved good for her.

I even met Dr Graham on a couple of occasions, and I have to say that despite being my employer, he impressed me. I also made some friends who are still close, if you can call Ontario and Leyton close. Roger Murray, our wedding photographer, emigrated to Canada and through hard work became wildly successful as a publisher, photographer, artist and graphic designer. David Coomes because a producer at the BBC: The Moral Maze was one of his best-known programmes.

I left The Christian briefly to complete a degree at Birkbeck College, and while I was away the BGEA sold the paper and made its staff redundant. I don’t blame Billy Graham: I doubt that he knew much about it. But it was a sad loss. Eventually I found a job at the Acton Gazette in West London and from there a few years later moved back to Norwich and a job on the Eastern Daily Press. The rest is history. In fact, it’s all history.

But Dr Graham’s death brought it back. Am I as sure now as I was then? I think you get less sure of the details of life, the universe and everything as you get older, but I am just as sure of the essentials that Billy Graham preached and which I grasped firmly but often failed to live out. But that’s what Christianity is about: not being good, but being forgiven.

I owe as much now to another prominent Christian: the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Rev Graham James, who I admire greatly for his intelligence, kindness and his deeply held faith. I think he, like Billy Graham, would echo the words of another bishop, Stephen Verney, as to what faith is all about:

“Faith is being grasped by a truth which confronts you and which is self-evident and overwhelming, and then trusting yourself to the reality which you now see.”

That’s not something that goes away.

Winterton can be a bleak place, as the name might suggest. Placed strategically on Norfolk’s east coast at a point where the coastline finally decides to take the plunge and turn north-west, it is exposed to fierce winds, tides and storms, beating in from the North Sea.

The beach is open, and the village protected by an ever-shrinking line of dunes, sometimes transforming into a soft cliff, behind which hides a precarious but excellent cafe and open ground which serves as a car park. Oh, and some stern black fishermen’s huts – substantial and strong against the wind.

It is good walking country, those soft grass and sandy paths, and I have walked it for many years, going back to childhood holidays at the neighbouring village, Hemsby, more than half a century ago.

Bleak, yes, but often benign too. Last week, in the middle of many days of unpleasant weather (often very cold, often very wet), we woke to sunny skies and decided to drive from Norwich to Winterton – mainly to check on the damage caused by a recent storm.

We arrived to find that the expected wind was almost non-existent; what there was came from the ideal quarter – south-west. The January sun verged on the warm as we paid in the cafe for car parking and walked down on to the beach, avoiding the half-hearted tapes across the main paths.

We had seen pictures; so we knew what to expect. A recent storm had somehow created a wall of sand halfway up the beach, turning it into small cliff. Below the cafe, huge blocks of stone had been exposed, and holes carved out of the sand around and behind them. It was a startling picture because it was hard to see how it could have happened, but the power of wind and water can do strange things.

A mile or so further south the dunes have been gradually eroding, and holiday bungalows have fallen from their perches on to the beach. Like many beautiful places, it is fragile, on the edge.

We walked north for a while along the beach, and eventually the damage disappeared. Everything was back to normal: the sea dark but calm, with large gulls bobbing near the shore. Turning inland, we quickly reached the coast path and returned to the cafe for one of those excellent rolls and a surprisingly good cup of tea.

And we wondered how long it could all last.

This is Paston Year. You may have missed the announcement as the bells rang to usher it in, or maybe it was drowned by the sound of fireworks.

Perhaps you don’t live in Norfolk. Well, that is your bad luck. Norfolk has everything except mountains. Mountains, glaciers, penguins, deserts and … OK, the world is full of things that Norfolk doesn’t have. But we do have a beautiful coastline, lovely countryside, the Broads, a fine city, Keith Skipper and a very relaxed way of life. Oh, and the Pastons.

Exactly 600 years ago the first Paston Letter was written. The country at a literary level  was still steeped in French and Latin at the time, and the Paston Letters were among the first written in English, mostly in the 15th century. They were preserved in what might be described as a miraculous way – lost and then found, dispersed and then gathered together.

The Pastons themselves rose from being yeomen farmers in remote North-East Norfolk to court favourites during the time of the Wars of the Roses and beyond. They were often lawyers, and they married very astutely, gathering land and money, power and influence – often in the face of stiff opposition. Eventually they became Earls of Yarmouth and then – out of the blue – they lost everything. It’s a compelling story and one that will be told in many ways this year.

I have to confess an interest. I am a trustee of the Paston Heritage Society, which, together with the University of East Anglia, has been awarded a substantial sum by the Heritage Lottery Fund to run a three-year project involving nearly a dozen centres in the county.

This year the emphasis is on an extensive exhibition at St Peter Hungate Church in Norwich, which was the Pastons’ parish church when they lived in Elm Hill, perhaps the most picturesque street in the city. There will also be a prestigious exhibition at the Castle Museum – an exhibition shared with Yale University in America. It centres on the mysterious painting called The Paston Treasure.

If you are interested, you can read all about this elsewhere, primarily on the Paston website and Facebook page. You can get involved. In fact, please do. I mention it here because it is one of those important and fascinating things that sometimes don’t get the publicity they deserve.

You know – like Norwich City.

Television can be a dreadful waste of time, but good television is worth its weight in gold. This is what is known as a bad metaphor, because you can’t weigh broadcasting in the physical sense, but I think a bad metaphor sometimes says exactly what you mean. So there it is.

What television does really well, in a golden way, is drama. A good story told and acted well is a joy, and pretty much the only thing that makes me cry. There, I’ve said it.

I don’t cry out of sadness, but usually for one of three reasons: because someone has behaved in a way that is profoundly good; because love has triumphed against the odds; or because something unbelievably beautiful has occurred. As Lady Julian of Norwich almost said, we suddenly see that all is well, all will be well and all manner of thing will be well.

You may think that is a pretty high mark to aim at, but all good drama does this to a greater or lesser extent. Which is why I was so disappointed by the much-hyped Bancroft, recently aired on ITV.

“Disappointed” does not really get across the emotions I felt when the last episode reached its dire conclusion. Maybe “intensely annoyed”, “furious” and “very, very angry” come closer.

As human beings we have some basic needs. We need to see good triumph over evil, love and forgiveness conquer fear, and innocence prevail over corruption. Because this does not always happen in everyday life, we need to see it happen in our stories. That is what stories are for. It is what the Christmas story – the kernel of all stories – is about.

Bancroft turned that on its head (I would say spoiler alert, but if I stop you watching it, I’m doing you a favour) by allowing corruption to triumph, a double (possibly triple) murderer  to succeed and those doing good to get trampled into the dirt.

In case you think this is a neat twist and rather clever, let me disabuse you. It is OK for evil to succeed for a while if there is something redemptive in it. Peaky Blinders is an example, and there are many others. It is OK to portray a realistic, corrupt world as a setting for the story. It is OK for wicked individuals to have some success if underneath it all the universal virtues are clearly visible.

Bancroft herself (played by Sarah Parish) has almost no redeeming features and does not suffer for her machinations, other than to have her son reject her, which seems to have little effect. I’m not sure what the author was trying to achieve. Someone suggested that he was setting up a second series, but as far as I and many others are concerned, all he’s made sure of is that we won’t watch it.